We finally made it late last night after a droning 7 hour drive down the I-5. Yay 95F weather!!

Jose was the DJ and we listened to all of my middle school and high school CDs, including Blink 182, Daddy Yankee and UK Pop Hits 1999. The best when you're driving past Buttonwillow (a city with a name we literally died laughing over) and tumbleweed after tumbleweed.

I felt like painting this candle and posting it the day before the final painting on this challenge for a few reasons. Back in May, we attended an "Engaged Encounter Retreat" (partially mandatory by our marriage prep class with the church). We went into the retreat super drained from finding a church, priest and venue for our wedding, and just needed a break. This weekend was exactly what we needed with tons of talks and with about 15 love letters written between Jose and I in 48 hours. We absolutely loved it.

The final night of the retreat, we were tasked to light a candle together and write a couple's prayer, a prayer that can also be recited during our wedding mass. Although I won't post the prayer just yet (I'll wait until after the wedding date to share with everyone), I will say that it was totally us, pretty poetic (very proud of ourselves for that), and just beautiful. We said the prayer together aloud over our flame, and blew out the candle once completed.

We plan on lighting candle for an hour long for every wedding anniversary we have together (it's supposed to burn for 50 hours, so at our 50th wedding anniversary we will have to replace!) and reciting our prayer every year as well to remind us of our vows and our love (so cute). I just had to paint it for the significance of it, and to remind us of what it looked like before it burned for a few times a few years in.